BOOK REVIEW: Different Worlds (Iamos Trilogy, #1.5) / Lyssa Chiavari

Title: Different Worlds (Iamos Trilogy, #1.5) Author: Lyssa Chiavari Publisher: Snowy Wings Publishing Purchase Link: Amazon GENRE Young Adult - Science Fiction REVIEW LOVED this novella! I'm a huge fan of Lyssa's book, FOURTH WORLD, which I read last summer, and this companion novella really hit the spot for me. Let me start by saying that this novella should absolutely only be read after reading FOURTH WORLD, since it relies heavily on the events on the novel (plus, everyone should read FOURTH WORLD anyway because it's awesome).  In FOURTH WORLD, the main character, Isaak, is whisked away from his life in a Martian colony, and we, the readers, follow him on an otherworldly journey. But before that happens, we get a full picture of his life... his home, his friends, his school, his family. So when he vanishes... what happens to them? DIFFERENT WORLDS answers that question by following his two closest friends, Tamara and Henry, as they grapple with his abrupt disappearance... and all the grief, anger, and confusion that accompanies it. There's a tragic sense of dramatic irony as we--knowing full well that Isaak's alive and well--watch the two teens try to figure out how to deal with it... how hard they work to figure out where he went, the danger they put themselves in when they suspect a government conspiracy, the tensions that arise because of that... DIFFERENT WORLDS takes place over the course of a year, and it's a fast-paced tale full of fraught decision-making and high emotions. I loved everything about it... it was so much fun diving back into Lyssa's Mars and experiencing the world. And the feels! Gotta love all the feels! The ending is absolutely perfect and left me with a mighty need for the FOURTH WORLD sequel (not that I didn't already have a mighty need... this just exacerbated it). Anyway, if you like sci-fi with some amazing world-building and fantastically written characters, I HIGHLY recommend that you scoop up both this novella and FOURTH WORLD... and read 'em back to back :-D ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lyssa Chiavari is an author of speculative fiction for young adults, including FOURTH WORLD, the first book of the Iamos Trilogy, a YA sci-fi adventure set on Mars. She has also written several pieces of short fiction, and is the editor of PERCHANCE TO DREAM, a young adult collection of Shakespeare retellings. Lyssa lives with her family and way too many animals in the woods of Northwest Oregon.